Easter came late this year, which means so did Spring Break. I felt like April was just one big countdown until Semana Santa. We get the whole week off before Easter. And you know what I did? Absolutely nothing. I decided to stay in town and truly relax. Like I mentioned in the last post, we were in the heat of summer. Much of my free time was spent trying to keep cool. (Remember we have no A/C here!!!) I took walks to the river...
And enjoyed afternoons at the pool...
I think this may be the first Spring Break where I came back to school completely refreshed and reenergized to come back to class.
Sadly I didn't get to watch the Royal Wedding (we don't have T.V. this year). However, the weekend after Spring Break my friend, Orson, invited me to attend the wedding of a childhood friend and it was GRAND! Orson is from a small town called Santa Rita, located right outside Copan Ruinas.
The wedding itself took place in Copan Ruinas. We arrived a few minutes before 6:00 (the start time on the invitation). We were one of a handful of tables actually on time for the wedding. The wedding finally began around 8:00!!! We had lots of time to waste waiting on the wedding to begin...
The setup was beautiful. It was an outdoor wedding and the weather was perfect and cool. There must have been around 400 guests invited...
The ceremony in Honduras is very different. There was a procession of people carrying various props that would be used in the wedding- bread and wine for communion, oils, and finally a treasure box (I'll get to the significance later). There were no attendants. In Honduran weddings, the bride and groom choose a couple to be the "padrinos" of the wedding. They serve as mentors throughout the marriage. The ceremony lasted about an hour. It was very sweet and personal. The groom dropped to his knee to say his vows...
During the first kiss there were fireworks...
It really was a fairytale wedding. At the end of the ceremony the bride picked up the treasure box. I was dying to know what was inside. She held it up and explained that when she was a young girl she made a vow to give God her virginity. He had guarded it for her and today was the day that she would give it to her husband. On that note, she passed the box to her husband. T.M.I.??? Really it made for some good jokes between the groom's friends throughout the night.
The troublemakers and lifelong friends with the groom...
After the ceremony there was a slide show and a short dinner (which was one of the tastiest meals I've eaten in Honduras). It was very different from the receptions that I am used to. There was no dancing. There was no cake. Everyone just left after they finished eating. We stayed around and visited with the bride and groom a while....
It was a lovely affair and I was privileged to be invited to share such a special night.
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